Confirming reports circulating for several days, Microsoft announced a substantial plan to reorganize its Entertainment and Devices division. Timed to coincide with the fall departure of retiring group head Robbie Back, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will take over the division starting July 1.
It’s a story about great creativity, perseverance, forward thinking. It’s a story about vision, about leadership, about innovation. Hollywood couldn’t have scripted it any better. After a long exile, Steve Jobs returned to a then struggling Apple when it acquired his NeXT Computer company in 1996. Apple at the time was little more than a boutique competing against the mass market Window’s juggernaut. It had passionate followers, a known brand, and solid product, but a relatively meager market share. In the decade plus that’s followed Job set out to rebuild and restore the company he first created. It may be a foregone conclusion, but we can now send the Champagne to Cupertino.
Apple is known to be a tough negotiator. How tough, and whether some behaviors cross the line of appropriateness is a question regulators are apparently looking into.
New reports citing “people familiar” suggest the government anti-trust regulators are inquiring about whether Apple’s dealings with music labels have been inappropriate.
On Tuesday, the New York Times reported one of the questions on investigators minds is whether Apple tried to keep the record labels from giving Amazon’s rival music download store exclusive access to some new releases.
Antitrust staff from the DOJ has reportedly contacted several music labels as well as some internet music startups.
The interviews are considered “preliminary” and at this time there is no formal investigation. Still, regulators are clearing keeping a close watch on Apple; an apparent reaction to the dominance the company has established in many of its markets.
In the late 90’s, there was periodic uproar over privacy issues coming from then developing internet marketing practices. A decade later, some of the old lessons are still being revisited, some of them relearned.
Amid growing concern and outrage from users over privacy controls, Facebook announced Wednesday that it will implement a much more simplified privacy management environment for its users.
Last week Facebook and Zynga resolved their differences and signed a five year deal to expand their partnership. This week, Zynga made sure it won’t be solely dependent on Facebook’s audience to power its social games.
Consumer demand for mobile PC’s (defined as laptops, tablets and netbooks) is on the rise. According to research from Gartner, global shipments jumped 43.4% in the first quarter, their highest in eight years.
With average prices down (off 15.7% year over year), increased consumer demand (as opposed to professional) was a key driver.
Asus and Acer, both pushing several inexpensive products, saw the largest growth rate among manufacturers. The companies’ shipments were up 113% and 48% respectively.
In February, Facebook notched more than 400m active users. According to comScore data reported by the WSJ, the social network hit half a billion in April.
According to ComScore, worldwide Facebook had 519m visitors in April. That staggering achievement was sufficient to make the social network the fourth largest web property in the world. Google, at 921m was the largest followed by Microsoft at 728m and Yahoo at 588m.
